From the point of view of modern English criticism, which likes to be melted, and horrified, and astonished, and blood-curdled, and goose-fleshed, no less than to be “chippered up” in fiction, Senor Valdes were indeed incorrigible.  Not only does he despise the novel of complicated plot, and everywhere prefer ‘Don Quixote’ to ‘Persiles and Sigismunda,’ but he has a lively contempt for another class of novels much in favor with the gentilities of all countries.  He calls their writers “novelists of the world,” and he says that more than any others they have the rage of effectism.  “They do not seek to produce effect by novelty and invention in plot . . . they seek it in character.  For this end they begin by deliberately falsifying human feelings, giving them a paradoxical appearance completely inadmissible . . . .  Love that disguises itself as hate, incomparable energy under the cloak of weakness, virginal innocence under the aspect of malice and impudence, wit masquerading as folly, etc., etc.  By this means they hope to make an effect of which they are incapable through the direct, frank, and conscientious study of character.”  He mentions Octave Feuillet as the greatest offender in this sort among the French, and Bulwer among the English; but Dickens is full of it (Boffin in ‘Our Mutual Friend’ will suffice for all example), and most drama is witness of the result of this effectism when allowed full play.

But what, then, if he is not pleased with Dumas, or with the effectists who delight genteel people at all the theatres, and in most of the romances, what, I ask, will satisfy this extremely difficult Spanish gentleman?  He would pretend, very little.  Give him simple, lifelike character; that is all he wants.  “For me, the only condition of character is that it be human, and that is enough.  If I wished to know what was human, I should study humanity.”

But, Senor Valdes, Senor Valdes!  Do not you know that this small condition of yours implies in its fulfilment hardly less than the gift of the whole earth?  You merely ask that the character portrayed in fiction be human; and you suggest that the novelist should study humanity if he would know whether his personages are human.  This appears to me the cruelest irony, the most sarcastic affectation of humility.  If you had asked that character in fiction be superhuman, or subterhuman, or preterhuman, or intrahuman, and had bidden the novelist go, not to humanity, but the humanities, for the proof of his excellence, it would have been all very easy.  The books are full of those “creations,” of every pattern, of all ages, of both sexes; and it is so much handier to get at books than to get at Men; and when you have portrayed “passion” instead of feeling, and used “power” instead of common-sense, and shown yourself a “genius” instead of an artist, the applause is so prompt and the glory so cheap, that really anything else seems wickedly wasteful of one’s time.  One may not make one’s reader enjoy or suffer nobly, but one may give him the kind of pleasure that arises from conjuring, or from a puppet-show, or a modern stage-play, and leave him, if he is an old fool, in the sort of stupor that comes from hitting the pipe; or if he is a young fool, half crazed with the spectacle of qualities and impulses like his own in an apotheosis of achievement and fruition far beyond any earthly experience.